Draft from the chapter "The Consistency of Love": Bleeding Poetry

I did not know I was bleeding poetry until she arrived that night, garbed in her white, led by drops of my verses to where I was.

I have always preferred the glow of the Moon, or if in her absence, the smiles of the stars. But the glare of the lamp mirrored from her eyes held me, reflecting into and deep beyond the hollow caves of my own eyes, deeper into me, until it felt warm.

She would have been a bloodhound on the third night, save for her voice, her smile and the way the light played with her eyes that made me wait for them so that they may play with my own.

I did not know she knew my pain and my shame even before she heard my voice, even before the fingers of her eyes have traced the surface and edges of my face that was and has always been and forever will be my mask.

She found me, bleeding of poetry from the wounds invisible as the ghosts that haunted me.

I found her, the woman whose eyes cupped the light and poured them into my own so that they may illuminate and reveal to her the map I charted.

She was never the Ice Queen they told me that she had been. Her voice was the wind that swayed me whenever she called my name, her touch sent my blood raging that my sad face remembered the shape and traced one smile after the other. Bleeding of poetry, I let my blood verses flow into her cupped hands, the same hands whose fingers traced and caressed the outlines of my scars.

But one could not and should not always bleed, even if it is poetry. And one could not and should not always drink, even if each drop serves to trace the path that would lead to where resides the face of mystery.

At times when I close my now lonely eyes, I remember when I listened to her heart that trembled in the wake of the tempest of our brief life. My chest was against her breast, my cheek pressed against her own as our tears found each other.

Separate tears that joined together fell alongside each other from two separate chins.

I do not know where she is now, or if she even remembers me.

She is gone, as I know I am away from her, as I always knew that we would be from the moment we arrived.

I no longer bleed poetry.


to I, who is along side J.